Dragon's Champion
by Charra Loon
Summary: Sombra attempts to blackmail Hanzo into working for Talon; Mei takes umbridge against it. Part of Hanmei week, prompt: defend


Mei was looking for Hanzo to tell him they were returning to base when she found him in the alley at King's Row. While she expected he had ducked away from the group to get some much-needed solitude, and respected his need for such, she didn't expect to see him with Talon's hacker, Sombra. Or rather, to see Sombra bothering him; she was showing Hanzo something that made him pale, and Mei never saw her dragon pale before, not like this. Zarya described Sombra as a vicious, manipulative blackmailer, but she didn't elaborate on that. Mei crept closer to see what Sombra had; it was a vid, one of Hanzo being beaten by black-clothed figures and seeing the look on Hanzo's face broke her heart.

"Listen," Sombra said. "It's all simple-I keep this off the web, and you do your new friend a favor now and then. What do you say?"

"I say what sort of friend do you expect me to be." Hanzo answered. Neither of them noticed Mei, who was coming closer. "My clan is for all intents and purposes dead, I have little to no power in those circles, I can hardly be the sort of "friend" you are accustomed to."

"Perhaps, but you got skills, _amigo_. Can't argue that, in an obsolete kind of way, but hey, no school like the old school, right?"

"So your offer is just a rather elaborate form of hiring my skills?"

"More like having them on retainer. You're not interested in joining us, I get that, lone wolf and all, but still, we can use another freelancer now and again."

"Then find someone else."

"Pardon?"

"You heard me, Sombra. I will not succumb to your attempts at blackmail."

"Even though once this appears all over the web, you'll be humilated. I mean, come on, what will Overwatch think, the great Hanzo Shimada, once heir apparent to the Shimada clan, having throughly and utterly, through his own neglect, gotten the clan wiped and himself beaten like a pathetic dog? Then again, you were always a dog, weren't you Hanzo? A good, obedient little doggie, doing everything his masters told him to, when they tol-ooof!"

Mei had heard enough, she charged at Sombra and reached for her endothermic blaster only to find it not working, Sombra had managed to hack the ice pack. She discared her pack, Snowball included, and the two wrestled on the ground.

* * *

Hanzo could only stare in shock-one minute, Sombra had been trying to blackmail him into working with Talon, the next Mei had tackled her to the ground, her ice pack discarded after being hacked. The two women rolled on the ground fighting for an upper hand, one Sombra thought she achieved when she scratched Mei in the face, but the climatologist surprised her and Hanzo by yanking out her hair stick and shoving it into Sombra's neck, not piercing the jugular but there was enough force that, Hanzo knew, that a little more pressure on Mei's part could change that soon.

"Ow!" Sombra cried. " _Puta loca_!"

"Delete it." Mei said, her voice arctic. "Delete it now, _biao zi_."

"You don't have the balls-ow! Hey!"

"Delete the vid, and every copy you have, and I mean EVERY copy, or I stick you right here and now."

"You kill me, that vid's released on the entire web! See your man try to handle that!"

"That vid, and every secret you gathered over the years." Hanzo said. "You may want to do as she says, Sombra, and elaborate on your fail-safe."

"And if I don't?"

"Then there is nothing I can do to stop her."

Sombra just gaped. "You wouldn't..." No one she tried to "befriend" called her on her tactics or challenged what she had-no one. "You'd let her kill me, and let the whole world know how pathetic you are? That your 'elders', such as they are, used you like a dog and left you holding the bag, taking responsibility for their acti-damnit, that thing is sharp!"

"Maybe your discovery will get out. Maybe those arrogant, pathetic excuses for elders will be seen as the monsters and manipulators they are, how they were the ones in power, who made the decisions and only used the one who should be master of the clan as their figurehead, their tool, their scapegoat." Mei said, and she glanced at Hanzo, who gave a slight nod. "But my dragon can handle the fallout; it will be hard, but it's a small price to pay to prevent you from benefitting from any of it." Before Mei could shove her hair stick through Sombra's neck, the hacker waved both hands and recalled the vid.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Sombra cried. "You make a very good point...can't use power if you're dead, right? So, here." She input a few commands and the vid dissolved. "See? All gone."

"And the backups. ALL of them, you disgusting _bi_."

" _Madre y Dios..._ " Deleting the backups took more time, and Mei kept her pressure constant, ready to strike if Sombra so much as thought of a wrong move. "There! Satisfied now?"

"The fail-safe too."

"Ahh...yeah...that, that one is tricky. Cloud drive, you see. Rigged to let loose in case something happens to yours truly. A little security in case someone decides our...friendship...is inconvienent for them, you know?"

"I'm waiting."

"Jesus H. Christ! Why don't I make gold out of lead while I'm at it!" Mei responded by adding more pressure. "Easy with that thing! I'm deleting, for crying out loud!" Mei and Hanzo watched as Sombra brought up her fail safe, waited for her to lower all her security and deleted the vid backed up there. Just as quick, Sombra restored her walls and shrugged. "Now can I go?"

"Of course you can go, Sombra-to Siberia. I hear Russia wants a word with you..."

"Mei, look out!" Hanzo shouted, knocking Mei to the ground, just seconds before a bullet hit where she was standing. Unfortunately, the move forced Mei to let go of Sombra, who took the opportunity to translocate away from them. Hanzo swore and looked around-the sniper was gone, and so was Sombra. He helped Mei up. "Are you all right, _takara_?"

" _Shì_ , I'm fine." Mei said. "But she got away."

"This time." It wasn't long before Winston and Zarya were rushing over, worried.

"We heard shots." Zarya said. "Are you two all right? Mei, you're shaking like a leaf."

"We're fine, Alek. Sombra decided to play a game." Mei said. "That...oh that _biao zi_!"

"Mei-Ling!" Winston exclaimed, shocked. In all his years working with her, he never heard her curse.

"She tried to blackmail Hanzo, threatened to expose something about him if he did not work for Talon! I let her know that her actions were unacceptable, but before we could bring her to you, we were shot at and she got away."

"Is this true?"

"It is." Hanzo said, holding Mei. "I will elaborate on that back at the base, but what you need to know, Zarya-san, is that Sombra has a fail-safe."

"Pft, fail-safe. Is nothing." Zarya replied.

"I know you are hunting her on behalf of Chairman Volskaya, and you have said yourself she is a blackmailer. She has a device of some kind, one that transmits her vital signs to a cloud drive. The moment those transmissions stop, the cloud drive is programmed to release every bit of data to the public-every single bit. So unless your chairman wants whatever Sombra has on her to be known to the public, along with everything else she has on other "friends", I highly reccommend you attempt to take her alive."

"...I will relay that to the Chairman. Come, we leave here."

* * *

Later that night, at Watchpoint Gibraltar, Mei found Hanzo on the roof after speaking with Winston about the blackmail attempt. She sat next to him and cuddled, trying to offer comfort. Hanzo just put his arm around her and hugged, taking in her form. They sat there for several minutes looking at the stars.

"About four months ago, Talon launched an attack on Hawaii, with resources from the Shimada clan." He said. "It killed many people-men, women, children...some of those children came from other clans, powerful clans. They were offended and outraged at the assistance the Shimada provided in the attack. So they formed an accord and struck the clan."

"It is usual for Yakuza to seek retaliation if one clan attacks another, even if the attack is unintentional." Mei replied. "Isn't it?" Hanzo shook his head.

"They struck the clan, Mei-Ling. As in struck it from existence, and yes, they DID intend the deaths of those clans' children. Every member of the clan from the highest elder to the lowest foot soldier, even those imprisoned, were marked for execution. Merchandise, weapons, resources, either destroyed or stolen. This went on for some time until all that was left of the Shimada clan were the ones intergrated into Talon, and even their existence is doubtful."

"They killed...does that mean you and Genji-"

"Genji is safe from this retaliation. When I "killed" him, I for all intents and purposes banished him, severed any loyalty he had left to the clan. I, on the other hand, did not get off that easy. I was captured by this accord, and beaten within an inch of my life. My negligence, they said, led to the Shimada clan allying themselves with Talon. While my actions toward Genji were excessive for dealing with his disobedience, it was, in their eyes, valid. What I did afterward was not. I abandoned the clan, fled my duty and responsibilities, allowing the elders to do as they pleased, not that they did not do so after I became master. Willess dog, they called me-one who followed orders instead of giving them. I let others influence me, I let the elders violate understandings established by my father, who is rolling in his grave at all of this."

"Hanzo..."

"They could have killed me, but they did not. Instead, they brought me to Nepal, they knew about Genji, and tossed me at his feet, telling the both of us in no uncertain terms that the Shimada clan was dead, it had died when our father did, and that it will stay that way. I can not rebuild the clan, not even as a legitimate operation. We both failed."

"Hanzo, look at me." Hanzo did and Mei cupped his face. "You made your share of mistakes, with Genji, with your elders, with your clan, and you have paid for them a thousand times. But you are not that boy anymore, not that boy who revered and respected his elders so much he did not see how they exploited that for their own gain. You are not the boy who would do as he was told without question, who let others choose for him. You have come a long way from that, even if the intent of this accord is for you to live in disgrace. You learned to choose for yourself, truly choose, and to create your own path rather than follow one laid out for you. Even if you never regain power, you are still Hanzo. Whatever you did or did not do, that was the past. The present is what requires your attention now."

Hanzo smiled at Mei, and kissed her. The kiss both drew and gave comfort. "My _takara_." he whispered. "I have been a terrible influence on you, the way you handled Sombra."

"She threatened you. No one threatens my dragon and gets away with it." This made Hanzo laugh.

"Come, your dragon needs to be sated. It has been a long day and the night should be for us." Hand in hand, they went back inside, focused on each other, and on the moment.

Because it was the present that they lived in.


End file.
